this is bbc news. the headlines... russia launches a major aerial attack on ukraine's second largest city, kharkiv, with at least three people reported killed. the mayor has called it the most powerful attack on the city since the beginning of russia's invasion. another shooting near us-backed aid distribution centre in southern gaza - the civil defence agency says at least six people have been killed. president trump says he isn't interested in making up with elon musk following their fierce online feud. senior republicans have been closing ranks around mr trump. the us government files charges against kilmar abrego garcia

on his return to the us after being wrongly deported to a jail in el salvador. welcome to ia decoded, the show where we take a deep dive into the world of artificial intelligence. ai is currently helping - its advocates say - to transform education by enhancing experiences

through personalised learning, as well as improving efficiency in administrative tasks. however, according to daily sabah, using these powerful ai tools carry some serious risks, saying if they're going to be used responsibly in the classroom, ethics-based ai literacy is essential. the guardian says estonia, a country that regularly tops education charts, aims to equip students and teachers with world-class artificial intelligence skills. from september, students will be given their own ai accounts. meanwhile, bloomberg warns the widespread use of ai in colleges could be a crisis in the making. the article says students outsourcing their assignments to ai has become routine, with professors finding it nearly impossible to distinguish computer-generated copy from the real thing. before we get into the discussion with our panel, let's take a look at this report from ai decoded's stephanie hare on ai and education.

one of the challenges about living in the exciting age of ai is how to prepare the next generation of citizens and workers to thrive. we're here in london at the excel centre at the ai and education expo. all around us are stalls filled with companies that have designed technologies and tools that are going right into the classroom for students and teachers to play and experiment and innovate. were i to traverse the confines of time and witness the bbc news ai decoded, my heart would brim with excitement. our first demo is from a company called 2wai whose avatars of historical figures function as personal tutors. it's the ultimate homework hack. after all, who better to teach you about shakespeare

than shakespeare himself? my name is jonathan knapper. i'm cto at 2wai. 2wai are working with bt to deploy educational ai products into the english school system. so i've got a homework assignment that my english teacher has given me, which is that i need to write my own sonnet, and i want to write a sonnet about how sometimes i love ai, but sometimes i don't believe the hype. certainly! here is a draft of thy sonnet. in circuits bright, my heart doth find delight for i behold the wonders ai brings a world transformed by artifice and light where knowledge soars on glimmering wings yet shadows loom as caution whispers low what price shall we pay for such swift embrace? what inspired you to even do this? um, to be honest, when i was at school, you know, i didn't necessarily feel like

there was the support available at home. it was always very costly to get a tutor. and so what we wanted to do was give students something that, you know, was very accessible. they could access it on any device and, you know, bring that sort of tutor experience back into their home, on their mobile, wherever they go. so, right now, when the kids go home, you know, they're googling all these things. they're even going on chatgpt to kind of fill out all their answers. all of that information is basically going off into the aether. the teachers don't have any view on what the kids are searching. so what this means with our system is that there's a place where they can essentially use ai tools that they're already using, but all of the transcripts and the information are actually fed back to the school and the teacher. so if a kid, instead of going on google and asking, "what's the main theme of romeo and juliet?" and then the teacher finding that out at the exam time when it's too late, they can see it the day after the child submitted their homework and see the questions that the kids have been asking, and then adjust their curriculum. it's time to put this tool to the test. so, mr shakespeare,

if you could leave the 17th century and come to the year 2025, how much would you love watching bbc ai decoded? were i to traverse the confines of time and witness the bbc news ai decoded, my heart would brim with excitement. such a programme would unveil the marvels and intricacies of artificial intelligence, a topic ripe for exploration and reflection. i would revel in the discussions of its potential, its ethical implications, and the artistry entwined within technology's grasp. to see learned discussions illuminating the path forward would certainly inspire my quill and provoke contemplation, much like the musings i crafted upon mortality and ambition in my own works. so back in the jurassic age, when i was a child, this was the limits of technology - pac-man - one of my favourite games. now, we've come a long way since the 1980s.

now there's all sorts of educational tech that allows kids to learn while having fun, which makes it addictive. some of the tools that we've got now can allow you to have fully immersive 3d experiences. you can learn from your mistakes, and your teachers can track your learning so that they're getting real-time feedback about what you're good at and where you need a little bit more support. students aren't the only ones using ai - teachers are, too. so imagine that you're a teacher wanting to take your classroom on a trip to the arctic. for reasons of cost and environmental sustainability, you can't take a class of 25 kids onto a plane and fly to the arctic, but what you can do is take them on an immersive experience into a room that's pretty much as good as being there. we're going to demo exactly what such a lesson would be like right now. so the first thing i would do is take my magic pen and click into what becomes

the nerc arctic research station. and i would be tasking my students with getting ready to prepare to go and join the scientists to do research. so we'd want to take a virtual tour. but it's really cool because we've now got a 3d floor plan of what the entire research centre looks like from the inside. now, i'm going to want to take the kids through and i'm picking the corridor. give it a good smack with, like, any old tech, and now i'm able to show them. each one of these circles is something that allows you to move forward in the screen. so i'm going to go and see the boat that we're going to use. there we are, finally! what is happening with this boat? there is a scientist. we are in the boat room. and this is what the scientists, including my potential students, are going to be looking at, but maybe they want a little bit more information. so we're going to click here. and we suddenly understand that we are dealing with a polarcirkel workboat 580. we've got the full information about what the boat can do,

how it's being used, a little bit of a picture about it being used out in the arctic on the water, etc. so now the students know we're not fitting the entire class into this. they're going to have to take turns. we divide them up into groups of three, so we spin it around. we get the full view of the boat, we say goodbye to our colleague, and that's class for the day. fascinating report. the conversation is already flowing here in the studio. so let me introduce our guests for the programme. joining me here we have professor mairead pratschke, ai strategist and digital education adviser. also with us, gary shoefield and calum worthy from ai education company 2wai. you saw their shakespeare appear in stephanie's report. and as always, here she is in person, our regular ai decoded contributor, stephanie hare, who looked, i have to say, stephanie, as if you were having so much fun making that report. it was very, very interesting indeed.

um, so let's begin with you, gary and calum. calum, if people are looking at this and saying, "he looks rather familiar," you are a very well-known actor. disney. netflix. a long, long, long list of credits. but here you are getting involved in ai and education. it's always good to diversify, isn't it? it is, yeah. um, but, you know, as an actor, you know all about engagement. so i guess this is an extension - getting people, educators and students engaged in education, in learning. that's exactly right. i believe in the power of entertainment. and if we can combine entertainment with education in an immersive platform, that's the best-case scenario for us over at 2wai. and, gary, as a tv producer, you also know about engagement. so what sort of feedback have you been getting from this? you know, it looks amazing, this tool using your shakespeare avatar, if i can call it that. absolutely. shakespeare avatar. what sort of feedback have you been getting from teachers and students? well, it was tested by bt

before they took it to market. they took it into the classroom, and they said to the kids, "you're going to be asking shakespeare a question." and they're like, "what?" "write one down, get ready, "because your time warp is coming." and then it was on a big screen in the classroom and teachers talking to shakespeare. he's talking back, "johnny, have you got a question for shakespeare?" johnny, "uh, what's it like when you wrote macbeth?" and shakespeare answers back. the engagement was something they've never seen before, in a subject, with the greatest respect, is not necessarily the most exciting. and at that moment, they knew it was something they had to get involved in. and they're our partners here. i love a bit of shakespeare myself, actually, but, you know, i mean, i'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to... i will read books, but, you know, the actual texts, not on a device, but i can really see how that shakespeare avatar is very engaging, especially for certain types of learners. i was quite sceptical about it. i've both been a student and a child, but i've also been an adult and a teacher of children, and i always would prefer that kids go to books first.

that said, if this is a gateway to get kids interested in shakespeare and maybe make them feel a bit more confident because it can be a bit intimidating going into elizabethan english straight away, why not? it was pretty fun, and i'd love to try the da vinci avatar and the isaac newton avatar for science. mm. interesting thoughts. mairead, what do you make of all of this? well, i haven't had a chance to test this precise tool, but it reminded me a lot of an avatar version of something that's very popular with 18 to 24-year-olds, which is the character.ai platform, which i think bbc actually featured a year or so ago, which turned out to be the second most popular app after chatgpt, that students in secondary school and university were going to, not just for educational purposes, but actually to have chats about emotional things, to get emotional support. so i can definitely see the appeal. this affective ai is very popular and there's a real draw, yeah. mm. and, calum and gary,

what's next? starting with you, calum - in terms of the sort of products that you want to produce for education? well, we have more historical figures that we're producing right now. and we also want to expand this platform globally as well. we believe that since the avatars can speak any language, this is a platform that's transferable to any education system around the world. and, gary, in terms of the diligence that you've done in making this something that is effective and constructive and beneficial and safe for people to use, what sort of work have you done on that? well, we followed bt very much. they set out the parameters for what they wanted to see in terms of protections, the teachers having the ability to understand what the kids are asking in case any alarm bells came out of it. so we really took their lead, and we met everything that they wanted before they took the product to market. and, mairead, more broadly, in terms of making ai tools for education that are safe,

that are constructive, you know, how do you think the marketplace is doing on that? it's a mixed bag, to be honest with you. the testing is really revealing, especially even in the last week. that the guardrails - even though we're working on them and a lot of ai companies are very aware of the need to create safe and responsible ai - there are still instances where the models misbehave. there was, you know, a big news item just this week about another chatbot, claude, that had misbehaved on a fairly grand scale. are you talking about hallucinations, where they come up with stuff that just isn't factually correct? yes. not even just that, but we also know that those models can be more persuasive than humans, for example. the research shows that. so, if they are what we call misaligned - which basically means behaving badly - with human values, we have to nip that in the bud. so that is something a lot of ai companies are working on. some are talking about it more openly than others. it tends to make people nervous - but it's actually a good idea to be sharing it, i think. steph... sorry, i just wanted to add that we took that very seriously - because we actually developed

our own process called fed brain. we don't rely upon the llms that are out there 100%. we like to control content, especially where kids are concerned. so we actually have our own technology, which has proved to be very reliable. we have less than a minute on this chat. stephanie, what's your burning question on this at this point? i want to know about the funding model. i know it might be different in the united states, but here in the united kingdom we're shutting libraries because we don't have enough money to keep them open. not enough kids have access to books, and a lot of teachers have to pay for school supplies out of their own salary for their children. this feels to me like a ferrari when what kids need are basics. well, let's take a look now at one of the stories mentioned earlier from bloomberg, to prevent students from using ai to cheat. the article says more in-class assessment is needed, even requiring students to take tests with paper and pencil. let's continue our conversation here in the studio with the panel today. stephanie, i'm going to let you come in straight away

on this with a question. gosh, where to even start? i think it's really interesting cos it's going to make us rethink the education model. and i was always a fan of subjects where you either could do it or you couldn't. so you either can speak french fluently or you can't. there's no... there's no bs-ing. halfway house, really? right? exactly. so how do we make it so we get away from the types of assessments that you could fudge - and that the teacher can cheat, the student can cheat because everyone can just use ai - and get back to the proof is in the pudding? you have to demonstrate ability and knowledge. yeah, and, mairead, in terms of this notion that professors, teachers aren't able to distinguish ai-generated essays or content from the real thing, where a student has pored over it for hours, what are the tools - or what sort of tools are there out there - for detecting ai-generated work? oh, the detector question. yeah - i mean, there are detectors being flogged, but i will just say don't bother with them.

they are not credible. they're not reliable. they falsely identify people as having used generated text when it's actually not true. they have been shown to discriminate against people whose first language is not english. because, as you say, when you learn a second language, you tend to use language in a slightly different way. they are just not reliable. personally, i will say i'm very against this idea of policing students. and i think there's a much better way to go about it than using detectors. it's that cat and mouse game. you will not win. mm. gary, calum, where are you on this? calum? well, i think it's so important to know if children are using any kind of prompts to get the information, to know what those prompts are. so on 2wai... one reason i called company 2wai is because it's a two-way interaction. and that's a very valuable data set for teachers to understand what questions they're asking the avatar, and it allows them to then tailor the education for that student based on that interaction. i think comprehension is becoming such an important piece of this conversation as well -

not just memorisation. and i think it's a good moment to pick up on that point you were making a couple of minutes ago, stephanie, about, you know, these ai tools that are out there are like ferraris when, actually, sometimes what people need - or students need - is a simple textbook. and, gary, what are your thoughts on that? you know, are you producing a ferrari? we are producing the best quality we possibly can. so, yes, we are but we are making sure that it's very affordable to schools and students. and we encourage governments, royal families, people who are responsible for their countries to make this available as cheaply as possible, if not free, to students. i would also like to point out that our avatars can speak 80 languages, so we can cater for the students who maybe don't get as much attention because they don't speak the home language. we speak all languages. mm-hm. yeah, i mean, is there an opportunity here, stephanie, for ai tools to actually really help students who are perhaps underperforming by, if you like, personalising

the lesson plans and prompting them towards areas of weakness where they can help? yeah, i mean, look, education has never been a level playing field. so very wealthy people have always been able to get in tutors and supplements to really boost their kids. and we really see the outcomes of that throughout life. so, if this is a tool that can be used to make it so that any student, regardless of language, regardless of socioeconomic background or geography can get a boost, i'm all for it. what we would never want to see it do, though, is replace actual teaching in the classroom, work with parents and grandparents at home with those big skills on math and reading. you have to reinforce that. and we have to support books. most kids are not reading any more, and we see what's happening down the road. when they enter the workforce, they are not equipped to work. yeah, the two things can obviously support one another, can't they? i want to make sure we have time to look at a story now from the guardian. this is about estonia - population 1.4 million. but it is, you know, one of the top performers in the pisa programme,

one of europe's top performers. it's the oecd, the organisation for economic cooperation and development. and it carries out an international student assessment. now, estonia is preparing to take an ai leap. mairead, what can you tell us about this? i can tell you a fair bit about this, actually, because i've been watching the pisa programme quite closely. so, first of all, pisa is really interesting because what they are playing with... 2025, they have a pilot where, instead of having students come into their exam room and just write everything down from memory, instead they're actually giving them an ai bot. a chat tool like chatgpt. i presume it is openai - since they have this agreement now. and instead of having the students basically demonstrate that they know what they would have to memorise normally, they're having them address higher order questions. that's the idea, is that they can supply this information by finding it with the chatbot, and then they can go to that higher order learning. i will say that is the goal. but there is also some very new research that's come out recently

that really is actually giving us a little bit of a temper on that, which is that we still need to figure out how to learn that rote learning. what you're talking about - memorisation, etc. that's really, really interesting, because i'm going to quote from that article. kristina kallas, estonia's education minister. and she says, "we've got to develop higher cognitive skills "in young people. "instead of," you know, "essays for homework." you know, "we either evolve into faster thinking, "higher-level-thinking creatures, "or the technology will take over our consciousness." now, there is a talking point for all the people who are worried about ai. calum, what do you say to the people who are nervous about ai, who look at this in quite a dystopian lens or through a dystopian lens? ai, like any innovation, can be used as a tool or a weapon. and we're in the tool business. we're not looking to replace teachers. my mother was a teacher. i'm a very big supporter of the teaching community. what we're in the business of is creating co-pilots

for the teachers. we want to support teachers. we don't want to replace them. yeah. and, gary, how do you think what you're developing with 2wai works on developing those higher cognitive skills that the estonian education minister is talking about? i think, to get any results from anything to do with ai, you have to engage first with the kids. they're the important things. and we believe we've done that. calum and i both come from a background of tv and movies and making things, you know, to grab people's attention. we're putting the same effort into shakespeare and the other five that are coming along. they'll be doing things on-screen that will not only educate but entertain, and we just want to get the kids engaged. once we've done that, we're halfway home. we've got a couple of minutes left on the programme. mairead, in terms of that engagement and developing those higher cognitive skills, how do you do that while, you know, ensuring that the kids are not so focused on the technology that they almost, you know, zone out from that human interaction?

yeah. so, i have to say, my area is more higher education than little kids, first of all. but there is an adult version of what you're talking about, which is an example from harvard university, where they created - they designed - a gpt, a custom gpt, as a co-instructor in a physics class. again, engagement skyrocketed. and interestingly, learning outcomes also increased because it was designed. it was designed with the way the teacher would teach in mind. i think that is the critical part. it has to be designed by the people who are experts in teaching and learning. and, stephanie, listening to all of this fantastic and really fascinating conversation that we've been having here on the programme, what occurs to you at this point? what are the next questions you think the world of education needs to be looking at when it comes to that interaction with artificial intelligence? i think we have to ask what education is for. so, on the one hand, we want to equip kids and grown-ups - big kids - with knowledge and skills, and then that ability to go on

to a life of learning so that they're constantly learning, constantly adapting. and i love the idea that they find it fun. i think sometimes we make a mistake in thinking that education... you know, it's homework, it's exams, it's awful. and that is just the biggest mistake you can do. learning is the most addictive thing. kids are born wanting to learn. and oftentimes school turns them off learning. so, if this turns them on, i'm all for it. ok, i would love to have a conversation - it's probably another programme, another conversation about ai and the tv and movie industry. i'd love to have that as well. your other job. but thank you all so much for joining us on ai decoded. professor mairead pratschke, ai strategist and digital education adviser. gary shoefield and calum worthy from ai education company 2wai, who we saw in stephanie's report. we saw some of the products in action in that report. presented by our regular ai decoded co-presenter, stephanie hare. great to have you all with us. i hope everyone enjoys watching and listening to all of this.

we're out of time. thank you very much for joining us on this episode of ai decoded.

live from london, this is bbc news. at least six killed in southern gaza - as a us-backed aid centre says - it is halting operations following a direct threat from hamas. at least three people have been killed in the ukrainian city of kharkiv as ukraine and russia dispute prisoner-swap timings. elon musk deletes social media posts that alleged a link between donald trump and the disgraced financier jeffrey epstein. thousands enjoy a marine-themed drone show in nice ahead of the un ocean conference next week.